The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1887-04-13

arts, and habits, and appliances that
should fit them for their new career in
their own land, and when this office
is discharged, and she begins to re-
gard them as her own, and resists
Gods commands in regard to them, he
brings them out of her with a high
hand and all outstretched arm. Assy-
ria he uses as scourge and a rod to
his rebellious people, though it was
not in the heart of the king, nor did
he think 80, and when that purpose
was subserved, the indignation of God
laid Nineveh in the grave. Babylon
was the prison-house in which the
Jews were cured Of their apparently
incurable idolatry, and the nation Of
Israel was utterly dissolved. Cyrus
and his dominion were made the de.
liverers of Gods church, and the
avenger Of her wrongs upon Babylon,
and when that power had grown hos
tile to the purposes it was raised up to
subserve, it was shattered to atoms by
the conquering power of Alexander.
His conquests in their turn spread the
Greek language and culture over all
the East, and prepared the way for
the diffusion of the Gospel in that
tongue, whenever Jews were dispers-
ed that spoke and read the Greek lam
guage. TO Rome was assigned the
/ work of making commerce free and
intercourse safe, of teaching the idea
of law to a barbarian world, of bind
ing together discordant nationalities
and races in one vast dominion, and
afording safe conduct for the preach
ers of the religion of Christ through
all the Roman world. And when she
was no longer needed for this purpose,
when her civilization became efemi-
nate and corrupt and her religion su-
perstitioUs, she went down before the
hardy nation from the woods of Ger
many. Thus one by one were these
great empires raised up to minister in
their several ways to Gods church,
and as they turned against her and be.
came unfit to advance her interests
were laid in the grave by resistless
hand. VIII
Look at the space covered by these
fulfilled predictions-Egyyt, Assyria,
Babylon, the empire of Cyrus, and of
Alexander and Rome, Judea and its
peculiar people, with all their strange,
deathless history, and all the lands
and people bordering upon that land
and since the coming of the Son of
God, the church in all lands and that
great usurpation or parody of the
church, the shadow it should cast on
the depravity of man, and the malig.
nifty Of the Devil. Take these from
the map of the world, and what would
be left? Take these from human histo-
ry, and what would history be? 1t Is
most manifest that the central current
Of human history has flowed over
these lands, and through these chan
nels of national life. Then the broad
stupendous fact is, that all these vast
affairs have been moulded and con.
trolled by the spirit and power of pro-
pkecy. In the path of that prophecy
lie the graves of these greatest Of
earthly powers and dominions, speak
ing in eloquent death and ruin to all
the coming generations.
It is the march of God through the
ages we see thus opened before our
eyes, and the graves Of nations, and
the tombs Of cities are the luminous
steps of his course and his judgments,
where the light of his presence still
fingers. What is a man, a city, a ma
ton, in the presence of such God,
and in the way of his purposes? What
is there that stands safe, and that has
charter to life and continuance in the
coming ages but his church, and what
soever shall minister to her glory and
expansion? Who is safe but within
her? From God she came-to heaven
she is bound-like the ark of Noah,
bearing all of life that is to live from
the old world to the new.-Princet0n
RemeW, Oct. 1857 quoted By DR.. Thons-
as iSnayth in obedience the Life OF
Missions," PIP. 10l-l05.